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Saturday, March 02, 2013

Relativity in your daily life

I love any way Einstein's Relativity shows up in daily life.

The GPS in your hands transmits data faster than the satellites receive it because time on board runs slower than on earth.

Steve

Here are the numbers:
The C/A code, for civilian use, transmits data at 1.023 million chips per second, whereas the P code, for U.S. military use, transmits at 10.23 million chips per second. The actual internal reference of the satellites is 10.22999999543 MHz to compensate for relativistic effects[72] [73] that make observers on Earth perceive a different time reference with respect to the transmitters in orbit.
Global Positioning System - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia